The general blackout of April 2025, like all traumatic events for the population, changed many things. Spanish strategic infrastructures, from communication towers to power plants, and essential services such as hospitals, have strived to find alternatives to stay afloat when there is no electricity. Most of these hotspots have traditional diesel generators, which cover their short-term needs, but also place logistical limits on activity. Eliminating these obstacles is the raison d'être of Atom H2, one of the most acclaimed startups in the Catalan ecosystem, which closes the electrical wound with renewable generation and a patented hydrogen technology. "We want to be the new standard for generators," says Anna Martín, one of the project's co-founders, in conversation with ARA.

ThUS artificial intelligence models, which have comfortably dominated the market since the launch of ChatGPT, no longer seem so unattainable. In mid-June, the start-up Chinese Z.ai, a Tsinghua University spin-off that has been at the forefront of Beijing's technological strategy, has released its latest product, GLM-5.2. The analysis published by the company itself places it at a similar level to the main products of OpenAI and Anthropic laboratories. Market analysts have confirmed its potential; the cybersecurity company Semgrep, for example, has stated: "We have another Mythos at home." Experts consulted by ARA acknowledge that a general independent valuation is needed, but indicate that, based on the published specifications, GLM-5.2 would be "no more than 1% below" American competition.

Grifols reorganizes the structure of its biopharmaceutical business, which contributes the most to the company's revenue. As announced in a statement, it will create "differentiated organizations" for biopharma for the United States, the Catalan company's main market, and for the rest of the world. According to the pharmaceutical company, this move serves to "further strengthen the operational and financial independence of the subsidiaries." In this way, plasma collected in the United States will be used to cover the country's market, while that extracted in the rest of the world will go to the European market and other environments where the company operates.

When Valerie Vanhooren left Belgium for Barcelona, she found everything to be countryside. The founder and CEO ofOna Therapeutics, one of the start-ups biotechnology companies most valued in the Catalan ecosystem, remembers its first landing in the State that "there was very little". A decade ago, Catalonia had an emerging network in the life sciences sector "unprofessional, with little money and little foreign talent". More than 10 years later, the Principality has broken its investment record in health companies, with 517 million euros in 2025, according to data from the Bioregion report prepared by Biocat; with venture capital as the main protagonist, after having dedicated 327 million euros to finance new projects. Research centers, entrepreneurs and investment funds recognize that there are still shortcomings compared to other European regions, but the industry's engine has already more than revved up. "Now we can compete," concludes Vanhooren, in conversation with ARA.

The SpaceX IPO, Elon Musk's tech giant that groups its aerospace and artificial intelligence operations, was an unprecedented explosion. The initial public offering (IPO) of the first major AI player to assault Wall Street was executed at around $135 per share; but upon its entry into the Nasdaq 100 index, it had already soared to $160. After nearly a week of unprecedented ascent, the shares surpassed $200 and the company's global capitalization dwarfed tech giants on the scale of Amazon or Meta. The euphoria, however, lasted less than a week: since Monday, the quotation of Musk's new crown jewel has fallen by more than 13%. It opened this Friday's session, in fact, just above $150, and moved around the same price all day, with a slight upward trend, to close at $153.

Sateliot appeared at the center of Catalan public life in 2021, thanks to InfoK. The company, created three years earlier by a group of veterans from the telecommunications industry, was one of those responsible for Enxaneta, the first Catalan nanosatellite. At that time, it was still difficult to explain the idea of going to space to connect to the Internet of Things and send one message a day to receiving devices. Half a decade later, the company is already an aerospace benchmark, and aspires to fill space with 5G connectivity satellites for security forces, defense units, and strategic infrastructures. The executive director, Jaume Sanpera, receives Empreses in the company's brand new offices to talk about dual-use technologies, satellite constellations, and how to become friends with Elon Musk again.

Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange platform, has hit the wall of European regulation. As the Reuters agency had already reported, the company will not receive permission to operate under the European crypto-asset law, MiCA, before the transition period ends on June 30. The company founded by Changpeng Zhao, it should be remembered, sought to obtain regulatory clearance in Greece, where market sources assure that it expected to find institutions "more lenient" in their application of the European directive.

Europastry expands its reach to the United States with a new acquisition in the country. The manufacturer of frozen dough for bread and pastries has closed the purchase of Highland Baking Company, a family-owned company in the sector based in Illinois specializing in high-quality bread for the horeca segment. According to a statement, the operation will lead the Catalan company to exceed 2 billion euros in turnover; a substantial increase compared to the figures for 2025, when it earned approximately 1.63 billion earned approximately 1.63 billion. Highland's was a purchase that the market had been following for months, and it has finally been closed in favor of the Catalan company. Figures on the scope of the operation have not been disclosed.

Hipra broke its business record in 2025. The Girona-based pharmaceutical company invoiced 516 million euros last year, its all-time high, and it is the first time it has exceeded 500 million in revenue in more than five decades of history. This represents an increase of 17% compared to the figures for 2024, in line with the company's aspirations to "grow above the market". On these sales, Hipra has achieved a profit close to 54 million euros, and has managed to reduce its debt to 145.5 million.

The war in Iran and its global economic ravages have made it rain on wet for Spanish small and medium-sized enterprises. According to the latest indicator of the SME situation prepared by the Spanish employers' association Cepyme, state SMEs were already suffering a situation of "stagnation" in the second half of 2025, before the start of the conflict. According to the employers' association of SMEs linked to the CEOE, the smallest companies reached 2026 in "a more unfavorable situation to face the risks" that materialized with the clashes in the Middle East. The president of the business organization, Ángela de Miguel, has lamented the conclusions that can be drawn from the semiannual report, which shows "weak and unequal growth" among small companies. "Today, SMEs are not doing well," she said in a press briefing.

Donald Trump has not yet emerged from one war and has already declared another. The White House has just unleashed hostilities with Anthropic, the artificial intelligence giant behind the chatbot Claude. With the prohibition of the use of its most advanced models by foreign citizens, Claude Mythos 5 and its controlled version, Fable 5, Trump has forced the hand of the technology company led by Dario Amodei, which has been forced to exclude the entire product from the market due to the impossibility of filtering individual users. This is, as detailed by technology sources consulted by Empreses, a "before and after in the industry, an interference that destabilizes the market," says Josep Curto, an AI expert and founder of AthenaCore.

The co-founder and managing partner of the specialized investment fund Asabys, Josep Lluís Sanfeliu, has been appointed this Friday as the new president of the business lobby Barcelona Global. Sanfeliu takes over from the former president, Damm's counselor Ramon Agenjo, who has led the professional association for the last two years. For his term, which will extend until 2028, Sanfeliu wants to "take care of talent" and accelerate the attraction of international investments to the country's capital.

Barcelona scores a new victory in the European technology ecosystem. The British company Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC), one of the regional benchmarks in quantum computing, will establish its new manufacturing and innovation center for this technology in the city. The project will represent a total investment of 92 million euros, and will be the most important quantum facility in Southern Europe. This is OQC's first location in continental Europe and, once operational, it will create approximately 210 highly qualified jobs.

Grifols is making a show of the proposal to take its biopharmaceutical business in the United States public. The company's non-executive chairwoman, Anne-Catherine Berner, has championed the initiative presented by the board of directors in March as a move to "highlight the extraordinary value" of its North American operations. In her address at the annual shareholders' meeting, held this Wednesday at the multinational's headquarters in Sant Cugat, Berner denied that the future market jump of Biopharma would involve "separating value from Grifols." "It consists of allowing the market to recognize this value more clearly," she stated.

The winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics, Philippe Aghion, has championed from Barcelona the effects of artificial intelligence on the economy. According to the expert's calculations, AI can add more than one percentage point to total productivity over a decade. The new contributions, however, are conditional on countries' ability to "build the right institutions" to regulate and promote it. "AI has great potential, but we need to adapt our policies to take advantage of it," he argued at a conference held this Tuesday at the headquarters of the Cercle d'Economia.

"Everyone needs a computer". This idea, a triviality at first glance, is at the core of the business model of a young Catalan startup that has managed, without raising external capital, to be profitable in just four months of activity. This is Walter!, a start-up founded by entrepreneurs Marc Ginjaume, Carlos Andion, and Juan Dávila that centralizes and handles all IT demand from clients, mainly other startups and tech companies. From the supply of computers and other technological devices to cybersecurity, including the maintenance of broken products, Walter! equips teams in "hypergrowth phase" of between 50 and 1,000 employees. And it does so – the crux of the matter – in less than 48 hours and in more than 150 countries.

The Grifols project in Egypt is accelerating its development beyond expectations. The joint venture between the Catalan multinational and the Egyptian government, dedicated to achieving self-sufficiency in plasma derivatives, will invest an additional 180 million euros by 2029 to complete the project and substantially expand the network of donation centers. Initially, the plasma-derived medicines company and the African executive announced an allocation of 280 million euros. With the new growth plan, total financing will reach 460 million euros.

The Mobile World Capital Barcelona foundation, the entity linked to the MWC technology congress that manages its legacy in the city, now has new leadership. The foundation's board of trustees has appointed journalist Laia Corbella as the new general director. Corbella takes over from Francesc Fajula, who left the organization in May to lead the artificial intelligence gigafactory project in Móra la Nova.

Josep Sánchez Llibre (Vilassar de Mar, 1949), re-elected president of Foment del Treball less than a month ago, prioritizes the fight against absenteeism and plans to have a white paper with solution proposals ready by the first fortnight of September. He already has the list of professionals who will prepare it and explains it in this interview with ARA, conducted during a break at the Annual Meeting of the Cercle d'Economia.

The adoption of artificial intelligence in the Catalan technology sector is already beginning to take a toll on the workforce, especially among the youngest. According to the latest report "Digital talent overview, developed by the Mobile World Capital Barcelona Foundation, the offers for junior workers among ICT companies in Barcelona fell by nearly 27% in 2025 The survey, it should be noted, coincides with the digital talent director's assessment: professionals in the sector are using AI to carry out tasks traditionally assigned to new hires. More than 74% declare using chatbots to draft documentation related to code; a similar rate to those who use them to elaborate explanations of already operational code. They also highlight assistance in development or making small additions to developed applications and websites.